


Paradise Lost

by ThrowYourChaosInNeutralAndDrive



Series: Takes Two To Tango (a twoshot) [2]
Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Gore warning, a: b/cuz she's smitten, and b: b/cuz she's got a vengeful streak herself, canniblism/dark themes, charlie delves in al's sordid past and decides to dish out some justice on his behalf, prt. 2, sequel epilogue thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:07:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21862690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrowYourChaosInNeutralAndDrive/pseuds/ThrowYourChaosInNeutralAndDrive
Summary: "He's a deal-maker.  He can't be redeemed.  And is most likely looking for a way to destroy everything we're trying to do."Charlie should have taken her girlfriend's advice.  The Radio Demon's corrupting nature could rival her padre's.  Vaggie could've told her that.(follow-up to Olde Redemption Flair).
Relationships: Alastor/Charlie Magne, Charlie Magne/Vaggie
Series: Takes Two To Tango (a twoshot) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575025
Comments: 25
Kudos: 122





	1. Chapter 1

Charlie’s horns hadn’t gone fully gone down since the debacle with Mr. Shadee. A darkness eclipsed her heart. And anger burned in her veins. 

She wasn’t going to put up with guests who didn’t take her rehabilitation process seriously. 

_You don’t take shit from other demons….._

She also loathed that her business partner liked her more demoness appearance. And she hated that she liked him for liking it. 

Just this morning Alastor had grazed the tip of her left horn with his forefinger and commented on how stunning she looked. 

I mean, it wasn’t the absolute _poetry_ which Angel’s many “now look who’s horny” jokes amounted to (she thought sarcastically) but it was nice. Nice and blush-inducing. 

She needed to get a grip on her fiery urges. Before they messed with her mission. Humanely reducing the population through redemption was her vocation. And no doe-eyed gentleman with a cute tail and a cuter lexicon was going to deter her. 

After saying she was stunning, Alastor had called her a ‘classy bearcat’. 

Which Husk had taken immediate offense to before Alastor extrapolated the meaning. 

Slang from the 20s and 30s was adorable. 

“Whatcha got there? Is it roast? Smells like roast,” said Angel Dust. He asked her as she passed him on the balcony carrying a dinner plate with a silver cover. 

He was wearing a see-through gown and robe with frills which left little to the imagination. Fat Nuggets was cradled on his hip and a blunt was hanging from his lips. Charlie sighed. She gently took the joint and stubbed it out on the banister. 

“My night-night weed!” Angel protested. 

“No smoking in the Hotel. You can smoke outside but not inside.” 

“Yeah yeah. Bust my balls why don’t you.” 

Charlie readjusted her hold on the platter and kissed Angel on the cheek. Somehow she’d grown platonically fond of everyone in her squad. Enough for them to be family. 

Except for Vaggie of course. 

And…

“Do you know where Alastor is?” 

“Downstairs in the Hearth Room. Brooding. I asked him if he wanted to tuck me in – as a gag. Unless he was down. Then there actually would be gags. But his shadow escorted me - the Numero Uno escort - outta the room. It was fuckin’ pushy about it too,” Angel griped. 

The porn star rubbed his cheek were Charlie had given him the peck. He looked partially annoyed and partially mystified. 

This was because although Angel had grown accustom to Charlie’s bouts of sisterly affection - he didn’t get them. They were in Hell. How did she maintain her sweetness? Did she have a drug cache as well? 

Did it have to do with her freaky mega-demon genes?? 

He’d ask Vaggie next week. When she wasn’t on the rag. 

“Awesome! I went out and got him a treat since he single-handedly closed that portal we were all almost summoned through. _Right_ before we were supposed to show our positive results at the Second Chance Convention. Cultists have the worst timing.” 

“Uggh tell me about it,” Angel commiserated. “Humans only think of their fucking selves. Memememememe. That’s their thought pattern.” 

Angel preformed a tongue pop. 

“I’m the same but I’m honest about it. Good luck with the Strawberry Pimp. He’s moody tonight so he might literally bite the hand that feeds him.”

He leaned in to whisper to Charlie. His extra arms and hands shielded Fat Nuggets’ ears. 

“I’d quadruple-check what he’d using as meat when he cooks meals for us, bt-dubs. Most of what he picks coincides with whatever anthromorph of the week we butted heads with. Like how last month we fought a boar guy and then we got pork Po’ Boys for lunch. It’s sus.” 

“Sus?” asked Charlie. 

“Suspicious. Yeesh, keep up with the times. Don’t start talking like Alastor. He’s hot but he talks like a damn grandpa.” 

Charlie giggled. 

“He did mention you were ‘off your rocker’ for trying to seduce an ‘icy mitt’ like himself.” 

Angel reeled back from her. 

“Eeww! See! That’s just – what even is that? Do **not** follow him over the hill, Charlie. He’s so crusty sometimes it gives me premature wrinkles. I’m out. I gotta apply night cream before discussing this makes me sad and saggy.” 

Charlie winked at him. 

“Sounds like you know your onions. Have fun hittin’ the hay.” 

Angel feigned severe displeasure for her cheekiness. He spun on his clear stripper heels and climbed the staircase leading to the upper levels. 

“GAWD! Nope. That’s it. Our friendship’s over. It’s cancelled. Bye betch!!” he called out with a wave. 

“Night, Angel! Love you!” she rejoined. 

Angel paused to flip her off with three of his six limbs. 

Charlie laughed and left to meet Alastor.

* * *

“Al?” 

The Radio Demon was indeed in the Hearth Room. 

He sat in a leather armchair (bound with berserker hide) but wasn’t reclined. His torso was hunched and his elbows were propped on his knees. 

He looked into the fire raging in the hearth as if it could solve his every vexation. He didn’t so much as glance at the massive family portrait hanging above the mantel. 

But he clearly knew it was there based on what Charlie caught him muttering when she entered the room. 

“The fireplace needs a head above it – not another picture. There’r too many pictures here….”

Magne was unsure if Alasator was speaking directly to her or merely conversing with the fire.

His body was normal but in the flickering light, antler-shaped shadows appeared over his head. 

“You’ve been looking into my past lately. Snooping.” 

_That_ was a direct address. Charlie felt she could respond to that. 

“Yes,” said Charlie. 

Alastor rested his chin on his knuckles. His stare-down with the fire didn’t cease. 

“A favorite scholar of mine once said ‘if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you’. Do you know what he meant by that, Charlie?” 

……….

“No.” 

“I do.” 

His shadow crown of antlers expanded. Branches of murky bone tried to pierce the air. 

“I peered into Hell long before I got here.”

Charlie set the platter on the side table next to the lamp with the ugly buzzard legs. Lilith had haggled it off a stingy antiques dealer whom her father had said was once involved in human trafficking. An upgrade, her father had surmised. _“For humans rarely hold their value.”_

“Did you ever see me?” Charlie wondered aloud. 

Alastor chuckled. 

“Darling, I couldn’t have _fathomed_ you. I’m convinced you’re the Devil’s best kept secret.” 

“I’m flattered, I guess?” 

“Don’t be. I’m actually irked he and his moll don’t have dirtier laundry they can hang out to dry down here in the Pit.” 

“Watch how you talk about my mom. She’d been known to flay demons alive for less.” 

The Radio Demon’s gaze finally drifted out of the flames and up. To the Magne family portrait, more specifically, to seven-year-old Charlie playing tea party with her dad and stuffed Leviathan as company. Lilith looked lovingly upon the scene from the shade of a rotting gazebo.

“What’s Hell to you, Charlie?”

He didn’t mean the place. 

“Being alone.”

He really was brooding as Angel had said. Lying to him, then, would be useless. He wasn’t in a good enough mood to ignore and/or condone it. 

“And you’re attempting to redeem sinners so you can achieve what torments you. Are you a masochist like Mr. Dust?” Alastor wheedled. 

They’d been through this. Why did he feel the need to bring up what Charlie had already explained dozens of times? Was he looking for an argument or had he gotten into Husk’s 666 proof whiskey? 

“I’ll be alone if the cleansings get worse.” 

“No you won’t,” he assured her. “Sinners are damned every day. By the thousands. Matthew 7:13 says as much. ‘Enter ye through the narrow gate. For wide and broad is the way that leads to destruction. And many enter through it.’” 

Charlie opened her mouth to retort that she didn’t want to constantly cycle through friends. But Alastor’s deliberation, malevolent as it was melancholy, continued. 

“It hurts coming here. I doubt you could comprehend it.” 

Alastor remembered. 

He remembered having his soul ripped from his body after death. 

“Because I’m spoiled?” 

“Because you’re pure. In a sense.” 

“I thought I was a ‘choice bit of calico’.” 

“That too.” 

Charlie hesitated. 

She supposed she should just come out and say it. 

“I found the judge.” 

The corrupt gavel banger. The one who’d paid off a pair of self-righteous cops to ‘open season’ on Alastor while he was trapped behind the bars of a cell. All to hide his own indiscretions. 

You see, Alastor had been a serial killer. But he was most drawn to ‘punishing’ the wicked. 

And the judge had been a naughty, naughty boy. 

His affiliation with the local pastor’s daughter still in grade school had become known to the Shreveport Killer. And, prior to being captured, the judge was to be Al’s next mark. 

But he’d known that Alastor knew. 

He couldn’t risk the madman outing him in front of the defense, prosecution, and those sheeple called jurors. No siree. 

Alastor licked his lips. 

“I’ve been searching for him high and low.” His voice became suddenly ragged as if his throat were dry. “Mostly low. Given our location.” 

Mikey chose now to chime in. The mic stand piped up from where it was leaning against the chair back. 

“Where’s the punk now? He’s in fer a walloping!” 

“Not among us,” Charlie admitted. 

Hmm….

So the Princess had gotten her hands bloody had she? Was that why he’d seen Razzle and Dazzle dragging a body-shaped tarp to the dumpster yesterday? 

Normally he’d be thrilled. 

But he’d wanted to erase the judge personally. And interrogate him before he did. 

“Did he squeal about Eddie?” 

Eddie had been one of the cops. The ‘good’ cop. The one who’d befriended Alastor shortly before partaking in his….execution. 

Alastor had a few issues he wished to hash out with the officer. 

“He did. Edgar’s in Heaven.” 

Charlie sounded as disappointed (and as not surprised) as he was. 

“I figured that.” 

An idea struck Alastor. Charlie had successfully redeemed her first batch of sinners recently. (Much to his chagrin.) Perhaps he could have words with Eddie up close from behind the pearlies if he kept the voodoo to a minimum and behaved. 

“Next time you lead a soul there, can I come with you?”

The Princess frowned. She delivered the bad news without preamble. 

“You can’t. There would be consequences.”

She should work for the radio. She’d make a great host. 

“Your old man said I couldn’t rampage across Hell without those and yet here I am.” 

“I doubt they’d even let you into Purgatory.” 

Then again, perhaps being that honest wouldn’t make her host material. Any reporter worth their salt needs to sell fantasy as much as they tell facts.

And she was right. 

He was too warped to get around the uptight angelic guards of Paradise. 

“Pikers at the turnpike. Wouldn’cha say, Mikey?” 

His mic stand erupted with a recording of boos from a crowd. 

“It’s not because they’re scared of you, Alastor,” said Charlie. “It’s because you’re not sorry.” 

“And I never will be.”

Charlie’s spirit sank and then rose on new wind. 

She was coming to realize that her crush viewed Hell the same way her pops viewed Earth: as his playground. Wherever he could have fun he was happiest. 

Even Vaggie had a shot at graduating Charlie’s program if she wanted. But Alastor couldn’t be saved. Vaggie had been dead-on in her assessment. 

It was just as well. 

As dejected as Alastor’s permanent damnation made her – the thought of him attaining grace and abandoning her was too painful to consider. She was glad he not only wouldn’t go. He couldn’t. 

Charlie took a seat on the arm of the armchair. Alastor laid a hand on her thigh as if it were the most natural thing to do. 

They just kept getting closer. 

Charlie hadn’t told Vaggie yet. She would in time, she promised herself. 

“What if, after this crisis is resolved…..you stay with me?” she asked Alastor. 

Alastor’s grasp extended to her horns again. He traced them down to the roots of her hair which he tangled his claws in. Tonight, he was haunted. Thoughts of the judge and his murderers did nothing but prance about in his mind. 

“They stole my life,” he said, chock-full of hate. “My right to hunt. Will you steal from me too?” 

His claws scraped shallowly into her scalp. Charlie reached over to the side table and uncovered the dinner platter. 

The judge’s decapitated head lay in a bed of lettuce. Eyes gouged out. An apple in his mouth. 

“Not enough to starve you.”

Alastor got a kick out of the meal. He laughed at Charlie’s audacity. And he was excited by her indulgence in gore and vengeance. His two favorite pastimes. 

“You are so tempting. Like father, like daughter.” 

He pulled her off the chair’s arm and into his lap. 

“Maybe I’ll dig into you for dessert.”

* * *

Alastor snapped a white napkin into existence and used it as a bib. With the knife and fork Charlie’d brought him, he ate his enemy with proper Southern etiquette. Mother may have raised hell on hooves but she’d taught him table manners along with manners in general. 

Following supper, the Radio Demon requested a song from Mikey. _Cheek to Cheek_ by Fred Astair. An oldie but goodie. 

He and Charlie danced in the Hearth Room, silhouetted by the smoldering fire. They spun and re-entwined to the rhythm. Not very sexy. But romantic as hell. 

_“….Heaven, I'm in Heaven,_  
_And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak,_  
_And I seem to find the happiness I seek,_  
_When we're out together dancing, cheek to cheek,_

_Heaven, I'm in Heaven,_  
_And the cares that hang around me through the week,_  
_Seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak,_  
_When we're out together dancing, cheek to cheek….”_


	2. Author's Notes

my stab at an evil couple dynamic – usually I don’t go in for that Joker/Harley ish. Too toxic for my tastes. (and not in the good BSpears way) 

The closest creepy ship I’m fan of – at least in aesthetic – is Morticia and Gomez. #goals

But c’mon – they’re lightyears away from anything remotely toxic. 

I’d daresay they’re the ideal couple. Fictional or no. 

but with Charlie and Al I thought exploring how Charlie has an inner demon Alastor wants to bring out - whilst the Princess is still trying to work her Disney mojo on him – would have interesting halfway results. 

Especially if Viv decides to have Al try and lure Charlie to Dark Side. (which I suspect she will). So he can see Charlie fail too. And because he wants his thesis (that there is no chance at redemption) to be proven over her own. 

Leave a comment if u got the time. 

And if u dug this lil scrap of literary fanart then - to quote Alastor: _stay tuned_.


End file.
